> > Without making myself look really weird.... has anyone ever eaten
> > fish food. (Well, would you feed your fish stuff that you wouldn't
> > eat yourself?)
I would feed fish things I haven't eaten. :-) Just the other day,
I saw some of my platties picking at a fungusing dead fish body.
I wouldn't eat that.
> Well, I have tasted dog-bisquits, dog sausage, few types of cattle
> food and rodent seed mixture when I have been taking care of furry
> animals, but even I wouldn't try bloodworms or freeze-dried tubifex
> I give my fish :-)
Ditto: I've eaten dog food, cat food, and all kinds of critter food.
The biggest problem is the lack of heath inspection in the food
preparation process (it's not labeled for human consumption,
so the FDA is largely not involved). The preparation process can
thus add all kinds of things that may cause health problems for
humans, where it may (or may not) have an impact on the targetted
animal. For example, the dog food factory can keep the piles of
food sitting on the dusty concrete floor until they get around to
putting it into bags a month later. Keep in mind: Lots of animals
still use their appendix, where we do not. We can't eat (without
suffering) the same things our pets can eat.
For fish food, I wouldn't eat anything. Too many parasites at that
level of the food chain. The dynamics among planaria, nematodes,
insects, and all those little critters is so amazing partially because
the diversity is beyond measure. For the most part, biological
interactions are pretty standard (and minimally diverse) when you get
up to the level of lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) eating other
critters. Thus, you can predict what happens. You can't predict
very well at the micro-level because we haven't even identified
many of the key species yet.
Oh, yeah--If you are looking for an awesome Sci-Fi plot for your
next gory movie, just scale-up the current processes that take
place at the micro-level. That's what brought us the Alien series.
(I've seen close-up slides of the convulsing caterpiller as it
squeals and thrashes while the wasp larvae bursts through the
caterpiller's side in a gooey and gruesome display of mandibles and
erupting guts).
BTW, my preference is for dry dog food. The canned stuff, unless
it's the good kind, can get kind of slimy. :-)
--charley Fort Collins, Colorado USA
charleyb at gr_hp.com or charley at agrostis_nrel.colostate.edu